Microsoft Word Thesaurus

Occasionally my intellect is not up to grad school standards…either that or it’s the intense stress I’m under because I’ve procrastinated for 3 months and now there’s only 48 hours left to write a 30 page paper. Studies do show stress causes cognitive difficulties...

Sometimes being intelligent means being resourceful, i.e. if you can’t do it, find someone or something who can. Since neither Reese nor Harley ever answer when I yell out “Dammit, what’s another word for ‘_____’?” I’m left to turn to Microsoft Word’s Thesaurus. This has saved many a paper from becoming a C-. It’s also saved me from being expelled for plagiarizing.

Tonight, on the Eve of the Eve of the Due-Date, I was frantically searching for another word to insert in place of “disorganized,” as I’d already used it 16 times in the previous 2 paragraphs. Word’s thesaurus was very helpful with the following suggestions:

Messy
Muddled
Jumbled
Anarchic
Unsystematic
Disjointed
And my personal favorite, higgledy-piggledy.

Can you just imagine Dr. Conley’s reaction to reading “Negative symptoms consist of social and emotional withdrawal, flat affect, loss of interest in normally pleasurable activities, lack of motivation, and higgledy-piggledy thought and speech patterns.” Higgledy-piggledy???? Seriously?!? This is the STUDENT EDITION of Microsoft Word. I bought it in the campus bookstore!!!!! What kind of student uses that terminology??? Bill Gates, you may be a genius but I think you might need a thesaurus for your thesaurus.